“When we got a cell phone call from Bill saying something happened to the roof of the home,” she added. “All of a sudden the phone went dead and we didn’t know what to think.”
Pat and Tad rushed home to find most of the roof lying on top of Cochran’s friend’s Mercedes and the rest in the front yard.
On Monday, Pat vowed that the home, which was built in stages in the late 1930s and early 40s would be restored.
Cochran just said with a smile, “Mercedes are my new favorite car.”
Unamphibious vehicle
Saugerties resident Robert Henderson had some serious ’splaining to do to his wife, Karin, after he managed to drown her VW Bug in the fast-rising Esopus.
Robert docks his sailboat The Black Swan at Lynch’s Marina off Ferry Street and when he heard about the storm, he thought the best way to keep his pride and joy safe would be to anchor it out in the creek, believing that if he keep it tied up to a dock with other boats the rushing water would slam the boats together and they would be damaged.
So he borrowed his wife’s Bug and went to the marina, parked the car in what seemed like a safe location and moved his boat. He stayed on his boat until he got a call alerting him that that his wife’s shiny gray car was up to its windows in water.
Fortunately Jim Benson of Benson Steel also docks a boat at the marina. He was there with a truck, which he used to pull the water-damaged VW to safety. Karin said she would now be driving her husband’s truck. Robert nodded with a sheepish smile.
The Bug wasn’t the only vehicle underwater on Sunday, but a truck down at the marina might hold the distinction of being the only vehicle intentionally submerged. As water began to rise, putting much of the marina under water, Bart Bell, who works there, pulled the marina’s pickup truck close to the water’s edge and tied a dock and several expensive boats to it. Bell credits the truck with ensuring the vessels weren’t swept into the Hudson.
Jerome Crandall-Hollick, who operates the Tivoli Sailing Company out of the marina, saved his two sail boats, which he uses to teach folks how to sail by tying them up to nearby trees.
“We’re outta here”
That’s what the U.S. Coast Guard, which stations several boats on the Esopus Creek, said late Saturday. They took several of their smaller boats out of the water and moved their larger cutter up to Albany. They were concerned that rising floodwaters would move their larger boat up onto dry land.
